DBMS > ClickHouse vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. OrientDB vs. Postgres-XL vs. SQLite

System Properties Comparison ClickHouse vs. Microsoft Azure Data Explorer vs. OrientDB vs. Postgres-XL vs. SQLite

Editorial information provided by DB-Engines

Name

Description

A high-performance, column-oriented SQL DBMS for online analytical processing (OLAP) that uses all available system resources to their full potential to process each analytical query as fast as possible. It is available as both an open-source software and a cloud offering.

Fully managed big data interactive analytics platform

Multi-model DBMS (Document, Graph, Key/Value)

Based on PostgreSQL enhanced with MPP and write-scale-out cluster features

Widely used embeddable, in-process RDBMS

Primary database model

Relational DBMS

column oriented

Document store
Graph DBMS
Key-value store

Relational DBMS

Secondary database models

Time Series DBMS

Document store

If a column is of type dynamic docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/scalar-data-types/dynamic then it's possible to add arbitrary JSON documents in this cell
Event Store

this is the general usage pattern at Microsoft. Billing, Logs, Telemetry events are stored in ADX and the state of an individual entity is defined by the arg_max(timestamps)
Spatial DBMS
Search engine

support for complex search expressions docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/parseoperator FTS, Geospatial docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/geo-point-to-geohash-function distributed search -> ADX acts as a distributed search engine
Time Series DBMS

see docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-explorer/time-series-analysis

Document store
Spatial DBMS

DB-Engines Ranking measures the popularity of database management systems
Trend Chart

Score	16.34
Rank	#38	Overall
	#23	Relational DBMS

Score	4.38
Rank	#77	Overall
	#41	Relational DBMS

Score	3.19
Rank	#93	Overall
	#16	Document stores
	#7	Graph DBMS
	#14	Key-value stores

Score	0.49
Rank	#256	Overall
	#117	Relational DBMS

Score	114.32
Rank	#10	Overall
	#7	Relational DBMS

Website

clickhouse.com

azure.microsoft.com/services/data-explorer

orientdb.org

www.postgres-xl.org

www.sqlite.org

Technical documentation

clickhouse.com/docs

docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-explorer

www.orientdb.com/docs/last/index.html

www.postgres-xl.org/documentation

www.sqlite.org/docs.html

Developer

Clickhouse Inc.

Microsoft

OrientDB LTD; CallidusCloud; SAP

Dwayne Richard Hipp

Initial release

2016

2019

2010

2014

since 2012, originally named StormDB

2000

Current release

v24.4.1.2088-stable, May 2024

cloud service with continuous releases

3.2.29, March 2024

10 R1, October 2018

3.45.3 (15 April 2024), April 2024

License

Commercial or Open Source

Open Source

Apache 2.0

commercial

Open Source

Apache version 2

Open Source

Mozilla public license

Open Source

Public Domain

Cloud-based only

Only available as a cloud service

yes

DBaaS offerings (sponsored links)

Database as a Service

Providers of DBaaS offerings, please contact us to be listed.

DoubleCloud: Fully managed ClickHouse alongside best-in-class managed open-source services to build analytics at scale.
Aiven for Clickhouse: Managed cloud data warehousing with high-speed analytics.
ClickHouse Cloud: Get the performance you love from open source ClickHouse in a serverless offering that takes care of the details so you can spend more time getting insight out of the fastest database on earth.

Implementation language

C++

Java

Server operating systems

FreeBSD
Linux
macOS

hosted

All OS with a Java JDK (>= JDK 6)

Linux
macOS

server-less

Data scheme

yes

Fixed schema with schema-less datatypes (dynamic)

schema-free

Schema can be enforced for whole record ("schema-full") or for some fields only ("schema-hybrid")

yes

dynamic column types

Typing

predefined data types such as float or date

yes

bool, datetime, dynamic, guid, int, long, real, string, timespan, double: docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/query/scalar-data-types

yes

not rigid because of 'dynamic typing' concept.

XML support

Some form of processing data in XML format, e.g. support for XML data structures, and/or support for XPath, XQuery or XSLT.

yes

XML type, but no XML query functionality

Secondary indexes

yes

all fields are automatically indexed

yes

SQL

Support of SQL

Close to ANSI SQL (SQL/JSON + extensions)

Kusto Query Language (KQL), SQL subset

SQL-like query language, no joins

yes

distributed, parallel query execution

yes

SQL-92 is not fully supported

APIs and other access methods

gRPC
HTTP REST
JDBC
MySQL wire protocol
ODBC
PostgreSQL wire protocol
Proprietary protocol

Microsoft SQL Server communication protocol (MS-TDS)
RESTful HTTP API

Tinkerpop technology stack with Blueprints, Gremlin, Pipes
Java API
RESTful HTTP/JSON API

ADO.NET
JDBC
native C library
ODBC
streaming API for large objects

ADO.NET

inofficial driver
JDBC

inofficial driver
ODBC

inofficial driver

Supported programming languages

3rd party library
C++
Elixir

3rd party library
Go

3rd party library
Java

3rd party library
JavaScript (Node.js)

3rd party library
Kotlin

3rd party library
Nim

3rd party library
Perl

3rd party library
PHP

3rd party library
Python

3rd party library
R

3rd party library
Ruby

3rd party library
Rust
Scala

3rd party library

.Net
Go
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
PowerShell
Python
R

.Net
C
C#
C++
Clojure
Java
JavaScript
JavaScript (Node.js)
PHP
Python
Ruby
Scala

.Net
C
C++
Delphi
Erlang
Java
JavaScript (Node.js)
Perl
PHP
Python
Tcl

Actionscript
Ada
Basic
C
C#
C++
D
Delphi
Forth
Fortran
Haskell
Java
JavaScript
Lisp
Lua
MatLab
Objective-C
OCaml
Perl
PHP
PL/SQL
Python
R
Ruby
Scala
Scheme
Smalltalk
Tcl

Server-side scripts

Stored procedures

yes

Yes, possible languages: KQL, Python, R

Java, Javascript

user defined functions

Triggers

yes

see docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/kusto/management/updatepolicy

Hooks

yes

Partitioning methods

Methods for storing different data on different nodes

key based and custom

Sharding

Implicit feature of the cloud service

Sharding

horizontal partitioning

none

Replication methods

Methods for redundantly storing data on multiple nodes

Asynchronous and synchronous physical replication; geographically distributed replicas; support for object storages.

yes

Implicit feature of the cloud service. Replication either local, cross-facility or geo-redundant.

Multi-source replication

none

MapReduce

Offers an API for user-defined Map/Reduce methods

Spark connector (open source): github.com/Azure/azure-kusto-spark

could be achieved with distributed queries

Consistency concepts

Methods to ensure consistency in a distributed system

Immediate Consistency

Eventual Consistency
Immediate Consistency

Immediate Consistency

Foreign keys

Referential integrity

yes

relationship in graphs

yes

Transaction concepts

Support to ensure data integrity after non-atomic manipulations of data

ACID

MVCC

ACID

Concurrency

Support for concurrent manipulation of data

yes

via file-system locks

Durability

Support for making data persistent

yes

In-memory capabilities

Is there an option to define some or all structures to be held in-memory only.

yes

User concepts

Access control

Access rights for users and roles. Column and row based policies. Quotas and resource limits. Pluggable authentication with LDAP and Kerberos. Password based, X.509 certificate, and SSH key authentication.

Azure Active Directory Authentication

Access rights for users and roles; record level security configurable

fine grained access rights according to SQL-standard

More information provided by the system vendor

We invite representatives of system vendors to contact us for updating and extending the system information,
and for displaying vendor-provided information such as key customers, competitive advantages and market metrics.